Thursday, January 30, 2014

While I am still unemployed but housed, I have been on a bit of a creative streak. Since the second underpaid stint at Mitchell's ended on January 24, I came up with a song (1099) that blasts their pay structure and other businesses moving to that pay structure to avoid paying the new $8 per hour minimum wage. Over the last couple of days, I went to slightly less incendiary lyrical topics- the piping plovers who are holding the Rockaway Boardwalk hostage (Piping Plovers) and Governor Cuomo, Mayor De Blasio, and other ACORN/Working Families politicians who think pro-life, pro gun Catholics have no business being in New York (Heaven, Hell, and Rockaway- Coda).

And here are the lyrics below to those songs:
1099- by Thomas Clarke

Minimum wage, we've got a way around that...
You've heard me talk about the 1099 before
but here's why it's such a threat to the poor
For 1099, you're supposed to be a subcontractor
setting your own pay, setting your own hours
Getting commission on something that's supposed to pay a decent wage
It was never designed to be a way for employers to enslave and impoverish employees under the guise that they're just independent contractors
But that's what it's become in New York City
It's not working, get it right and fix it
$8 an hour might be too high to be the minimum
but for $5 an hour for twice as much work for overtime hours
with no overtime pay is too little
And it's not just the milkman messengers from Long Island City (Mitchells) that are doing this
How about some inedible fruit arrangements from Manhattan with a legal wage the reward after months of 5 an hour?
How about the big kahuna of messenger companies (Urban Express) that switched to low commission and no tax help after paying above the old minimum wage last year?
Nobody seems to know or care
and they think the ones getting paid a legal wage are the only ones getting screwed
Some think that more pay with benefits is too little
and some think that the taxpayers are their piggy bank
Why should they get one penny more
when there are people earning far less, working a lot more
and not getting a legal wage?
Fix the 1099 gap so those trapped in it can get a legal wage
fix the healthcare system
but not by forcing people to buy insurance and driving those premiums through the roof
fix poverty by helping the poor become not poor
instead of punishing them by making them or keeping them poor
The leftist ideas from before didn't work then and they are making stuff worse now
Quit making stuff too expensive
Quit overtaxing the rich when their money can alleviate some of the suffering
and they can move their money with them
Leaving those who cannot afford the bill the only ones who can pay for it.
Quit saying life and self defense and religion are part of the problem and not welcome
When they may be part of the solution
The 1099 perps aren't the only problem
the jackasses need to go too
get it right before the wrong type of revolution comes
and heads start rolling
and no one wins
it's not working, get it right and fix it

Piping Plovers lyrics (c) 2014 by Thomas Clarke

we fly across the waves without much ease
we look cute when we strut and when we feed
we look cute, but don't mess with us
we're the piping plovers
we migrate west, we like the upper crust
we trot across the beach so cute and so free
we look cute, but don't misjudge us
we milk "endangered" for all it's worth
we look cute, but don't mess with us
we'll get our gull goons after you
we look cute, but don't mess with us
we're the piping plovers
we left our nests on the ghetto beach
we claimed it was because of Sandy
we look cute, but don't misjudge us
Don't think you're getting your new boardwalk anytime soon
Not until you pay for our new beachfront property!
we look cute, but don't mess with us
we're the piping plovers
don't mess with us
we'll get our EPA lawyers after you
we're the piping plovers
think we should press FEMA for a new jacuzzi?
no, let the pigeons pay for it from their tributes

Heaven, Hell, and Rockaway (Coda) Lyrics- (c) 2014

Trapped somewhere between Heaven, Hell, and Rockaway
between what's left of America and Europe
somewhere where the poor are getting poorer
the Faith is under attack
what used to be wrong is now right
and what used to be right is now not welcome
Somewhere in Rockaway
the pigeons, seagulls, and piping plovers are fighting over food at the shore
and the plovers are holding up the new Boardwalk until 2017!
politicians are fighting over monetary food
over how progressive they can be
when they're really regressive
who says someone being pro-life and wanting to defend oneself has no business being in New York?
Maybe Cuomo, DeBlasio, and their ACORN and jackass buddies should leave New York instead!
I'm to poor to live here comfortably............
Stuck somewhere between Heaven, Hell, and Rockaway
and maybe somewhere between Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Texas
if things don't work out here......
Who said I had to stick to one style?
who said I had to leave things the way they were?
it's a brave but messed up new world
and I'm trying to adapt

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

New year, same old problems. I am unemployed again- because 5 months worth of sub-minimum wage commission delivery work did a number on both my wallet and my right knee.
I started the new year in Rockaway Park with my sister and nephew visiting from Dyersburg, TN. This was the first time I had seen either since my 30th birthday- in May 2002! Not long after they got here, a major snowstorm socked NYC with 6-12 inches of the white stuff.

On the way back to Pennsylvania and Tennessee, my sister got trapped in an ice storm.
About 2.5 weeks later, another snow storm of around a foot hit NYC.

Supposedly NYC is not the only place in North America with horrifically-below-average January temps. Austin had temps in the 20s- a good 20-30 below average (and a humanitarian crisis with 4000+ homeless flooding the shelters that were designed for one tenth that number). Colorado Springs had major snowstorms. Minnesota had days in which the high temperature was below 0. And the Southeast got paralyzed this week by snow- albeit far less snow than what NYC has seen this month.
Even Florida and Texas can't escape this cold. The Super Bowl will be held across the river from NYC on Sunday. I hope the NFL knows what it's in for- cold (although 30s by then will be a heat wave compared to most of this month), chance of snow, unfilled seats because few sane people want to pay 4 figures to see an outdoor game in the cold. Even the hotels (which unlike Met Life Stadium do have heat) are having trouble filling their rooms.
I can see now why Liz Stonehill (an EMT dispatcher whose office is probably warmer than my room in Rockaway) considers snow to be a 4 letter word.

Links

About Me

I am an electronic music producer, blogger, writer, commentator, photographer, and an amateur video producer. I have videos on Youtube and 70+ original tracks on HearThis.At and on Soundcloud, as well as a mp3 album/single sales page on Bandcamp and 3 submissions on Indaba Music. My most liked music tracks on Soundcloud are my first original house song, "Up" and a house tune I released at the start of 2014 called "Frustration". 2 of my most liked videos were both shot in May 2013, the first time I stayed in Austin, TX- a video of President Obama's motorcade taken from outside the shelter I was staying at (which was also the first video I ever took on an Android phone), and a film project about Downtown Austin's 6th Street entertainment district. In 2014, I worked in a warehouse in North Austin and contributed music and other stuff to an Austin-based art/media project about low-income and homeless matters called "Am I Invisible". I lived in the NYC area from 1996 to 2007, 2008 to 2010, 2011 to 2014, and from February 2015 to February 2016 after a residential dispute in Colorado Springs cost me my affordable housing (in a probably illegal eviction).